Events such as natural and man-made disasters cause major interruptions to business operations of large public and private organizations. Existing approaches to situational awareness, disaster recovery and business continuity tend to track information using spreadsheets and to exchange information by ordinary email based systems. In addition, key parties responsible for managing the crisis tend to be restricted to operate via a computer located in a central command center. These approaches inhibit speed, reliability and flexibility in the capture, exchange, accessing, tracking, recording and other management of information, the interaction between geographically remote parties, and the implementation of recovery measures and other responses, which are necessary or conducive to effective and efficient disaster recovery and business continuity. In short, prior art approaches are overly slow, complex, error-prone, and rigid.